Page 63 of Knowing Mr. Darcy

She wanted to kiss him again.

Best not do that. She touched her bottom lip. Was it bruised? She could not stop smiling.

“Tell me you’ve accepted me, then,” he breathed.

She nodded, still smiling, nodded and nodded.

“And Richard?” he said.

Elizabeth had not told anyone about the colonel’s proposal, because she knew what everyone would have said. They would have told her she must accept him. She had stayed home that evening precisely because she couldn’t bear the sight of him, however.

It was not that she disliked the colonel, because she found him a pleasant man on the whole. But this marriage proposal of his, it had been cruel, in her opinion. How dare he dangle all that in front of her, knowing what pressure it would put on her, when he knew that she was in love with Mr. Darcy?

Perhaps he didn’t know she was in love, she would grant,she supposed. However, he knew Mr. Darcy was in love with her.

Colonel Fitzwilliam hadn’t done it out of any true regard for her, though. He’d wanted to… to possess her.

Mr. Darcy wanted to possess her, too, she supposed, but it was different. Not because she thoughthehad true regard for her. She didn’t think either of them knew each other, not really, and it was all frightfully foolish, the sort of youthful spark of love that everyone was always claiming would fade.

It was different because shewantedto be possessed by this man. She wanted to put herself at his mercy and let him do with her as he wished. She didn’t know why. It wasn’t intelligent or even much like her. But it was the truth.

“He proposed,” she said, sounding as though she’d been running for miles, her voice very winded, “but I said very little. He asked me if I wanted to think about it, and I said I did.”

“Because you had no hope of me, I suppose.” He looked regretful. “I am ever so sorry. I have no excuses, really, only that your effect on me is rather frightful. I mean to behave a certain way, and then I see you, and I can’t think.”

“Yes, it is much the same for me,” she said.

“But it wasn’t always,” he said. “You weren’t like this until that ball in London. What happened?”

“I don’tknow,” she said. “I suppose it’s some sort of violent storm of love. Aren’t they always writing poems about such things?”

“So, you have fallen for me for no reason, then?”

“Have you not fallen for me in much the same way? You said you have struggled, and sir, I have seen the struggle, writ quite plainly upon your face, every time we are close. You want me against your will.”

He furrowed his brow. “Well, perhaps, but when I say that, it sounds sort of romantic, and when you say it back to me, that you want me againstyourwill, I don’t like it.”

She shrugged. “I suppose I should be glad of the situation. My status will be improved materially. You’re theone who will suffer all the humiliation of having fallen for a woman like me.”

He scoffed. “They’ll take one look at you and understand why.”

Shescoffed. “I’m not even the pretty one. You said I was only tolerable—”

“The pretty one?”

“Of my sisters.”

“So, who is?”

“Jane!”

He only laughed.

“What?” she said.

“I don’t know, Miss Bennet, but every man you’ve fallen in with over the past few months has proposed marriage to you—”

“No, they have not!”